January 22, 2008

Cops evacuated the Brooklyn Heights neighborhood around the Remsen St. home of Michael Clatts, a medical anthropologist, after finding seven pipe bombs fitted with fuses in his flat, police sources said.

The frightening cache was discovered almost by accident - Ivaylo Ivanov, the man living with Clatts, accidentally shot off the tip of his left index finger and sought police help in the street about 1:15 a.m.

When investigators went to the 37-year-old Ivanov's apartment, they found the bombs, already capped on both ends and filled with powder. One of the pipe bombs was inserted into a Nerf football, cops said.

A 9-mm. handgun, two ammunition magazines, a 12-gauge shotgun, silencers, a bulletproof vest, a crossbow and bomb-making equipment, including a drill and threading machine that could be used to make pipe bombs, were also recovered, cops said.

Investigators with the NYPD-FBI were questioning Ivanov, a native of Bulgaria, to determine whether he had any terrorism or Russian Mafia connections, a source told the Daily News.

"Russian Mafia aren't fazed by getting a fingertip shot off - and they certainly don't go to the cops for help," the source said.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers picked up the researcher, Michael Clatts, at John F. Kennedy International Airport yesterday morning as he was returning from Vietnam, where he had been conducting a research project for the National Institute on Drug Abuse....

Customs officers took Mr. Clatts to the Downtown Brooklyn precinct, where he refused to speak with detectives working on the case. Instead, he requested his lawyer be called and was later released....

Several neighbors in the building said they believed that Mr. Clatts would have been unaware of his roommate's alleged involvement in the crimes. Mr. Clatts travels often for his work, his neighbors have said, and he was not believed to be in the apartment this week when the arsenal was found.

Apparently heavily armed maniac Ivanov also confessed to spray-painting the swastikas that appeared on two Remsen St. synagogues last September -- one of which my daughter attends for Hebrew School. She even had Hebrew School the day the swastikas were discovered -- and were blasted off the brownstone. (When I picked her up that night, I innocently asked, “So . . . what did you talk about in Hebrew School today?”)

And Ivanov -- please, let no one fabricate any Dostoevskian anti-hero comparisons for this loonie -- lived only a block or two away from the synagogues. I didn’t think that racist vandalism was much like burglary, but there too, apparently, it’s usually done by somebody right in the neighborhood. (Where do you think he wanted to hurl those pipe-bombs anyway? At the time, my daughter and I shrugged off the swastikas as the work of harmless slimeballs, but maybe we weren't being paranoid enough.)

And I so agree, "former law student," the real threat is Michelle Malkin, isn't it?

Last September, I posted about the swastika incident the day after it happened on the blog of a good Zionist friend, and -- since it coincided with Ahmadinejad’s visit to New York -- there were a number of commenters there who were certain that Arabs were responsible. I said racist white guys were still more likely culprits. At least I got that one right.

That Ivanov was living with a teacher at Columbia -- in an apartment that neighbors and owners both have said was way too small for the roomie to claim ignorance of the other one’s secret life as an urban race-warrior -- makes me feel even more disappointment in my alma mater.

I remember the days when people thought of Columbia and thought of “Sha Na Na.”

I'm picking my girl up at the synagogue again tonight, thankfully in one piece. I wonder if anybody there will have something to say about this recent development -- or if I'll rather just not inquire.

Former Law Student: I read the aggregating site Memeorandum a lot, and this is a case of going to MM from there and then to the Daily News. I suppose I should always link Memeorandum too in that situation, but it works automatically, so I don't always take the time to do it.

It's not clear to me from the coverage that Clatts actually lived there. In the NYT: Mr. Ivanov told investigators he intended to use the bombs for fishing; but, given his admission that he painted swastikas on synagogues, investigators became concerned he was planning violence.

He apparently strudies HIV, drug users and poverty. His school at Columbia looks oh so social justice in its outlook:

The Department of Sociomedical Sciences is distinguished by its focus on the social determinants of disease and health. This is accomplished by examining the correlation between epidemiological trends and structural inequities in order to expose the fundamental social causes of public health events, including discrimination, stigma, and poverty.

Since the prof seems to spend a lot of time out of the country for research, as well as for an appointment at a university in Puerto Rico, I wonder if this is just a case of picking a really, really bad housesitter.

The flip side of that "expectation of privacy" thing that the 4th amendment provides to a person in their home is that the police seem to think that the same homeowner "should" be aware of the private things going on in that same home.

If nothing else, Clatts is going to have a number of long talks with the FBI and find it hard to fly places without having his cavities inspected :)

There are reports of chalk outlines of egg salad sandwiches with a line drawn through them being etched on the sidewalks in front of several deli's in Brooklyn Heights. Vandalism by rowdy teenagers? A sick cry for help? A mind tortured by the academy to such a degree that it has been lost to madness?

And whatever happened to the supposed "hate crime" at Columbia involving a noose? What about that surveillance video? Whodunnit?

Ahmadinejad spoke freely at Columbia, that purveyor of deathtothejoos.

They ejected the young man making the movie "Indoctrinate U." (No free speech for you!)

And now this.What's with Columbia?Why does it still draw a breath?

And aphalib:Since when are pipe bombers just some meme for you to draw an idiotic political point? What an insufferable twit you are. This asshole meant to kill a bunch of jews in a synagogue. What's the matter with you anyway?

Much as it pains me, I'm a Columbia grad myself but they're off the hook on this guy. Clatts did not have tenure. In its commitment to publish all the news that fits, the New York Times does not mention Clatts's Columbia connection, but does mention that he got a minor contract from the Giuliani administration way back when.

A question for Amendment II absolutists: Would it be possible for government to forbid filling a small apartment with pipe bombs in the midst of a crowded neighborhood? Just asking.

"I said racist white guys were still more likely culprits. At least I got that one right." -- Drew W

Ironically, his lawyer makes the claim that Ivanov is Jewish. Given that, what bigotry are we exposing here, Drew? His, yours, or that of your "good Zionist friend"? (Quote, not scare quote) It behooves all not to stereotype the... er... stereotypers. Yeh, nevermind, carry on.

I am generally curious what effect that would have on a possible hate-crime prosecution.

You evoke the Ghost of Bombers Past: The Weathermen (Um, shouldn’t that have been “Weatherpersons”? Oh, that was before PC. Sort of premature un-PC, I guess.)

FYI, Arnold Beichman nailed them & other, um, fairy tales in his Nine Lies About America. Lie # 3: "The Bomber Left Is a Moral Force".

Pogo: Beichman quotes a Columbia Prof in 1970 as saying after the Alma Mater statute on Campus was bombed:“These kids have a higher priority –--social justice--- and if we had social justice these things wouldn’t happen." Plus ça change….

And the trolls use this as an excuse to get off on their “There is no Constitutional right to bear arms” meme. Plus ça change….. What, no reference to American bombing of Iraqis? They’re slipping!

When I lived in NYC there was an illegal drug factory in a house two blocks away (pace, Skyler) and whatever the denizens were doing, there was a house busting explosion. Some elderly neighbor had decided to rent her house while she was retired in Fla, rather than sell. She didn’t get a D&B apparently. Slum landlords would’ve been more careful!

I’m working on the assumption that your post above was a joke. But in the off-chance it wasn’t, this was my reasoning. Let me walk you through it:

Swastikas -- save the traditional Hindu ones -- are more or less universally recognized today as a symbol of the White Power movement, and thus the possibility that they were left there by a white person seemed to me to be statistically high.

And if Ivanov really is Jewish, then I think we can all agree he’s an anti-Semite with some serious issues to work through. (In contrast to the other anti-Semites in the world, who thankfully all have their heads screwed on straight, right?) Whatever his background, the impact of his crime was the same, which is probably why he still gets charged for the swastikas back in September.

If he’s acting out some neurotic ritual of ethnic self-reproach, isn’t it still as much a hate crime as it would be if he were a drunken skinhead lashing out at the Zionist Occupation Government? (And wouldn't my child and I be just as dead if he'd tossed one of those fully-armed pipe bombs through the synagogue window when we were inside?)

But hey, I have enjoyed playing the home version of that tried-and-true white liberal game, “No, You’re The Racist!” (Tell him what he wins Johnny Olson!)

From reading the article and comments it looks like we need more information.

For example, is Mr. I a Bulgarian jew, muslim, or christian? Did he really need bombs for fishing? Why did he paint Swaz-sticker's on the Jewish place of worship? And why isn't he in jail for doing same?Doesn't New York lead the nation in "Hate" crime legislation?

I run a lamp-making art studio, now moving into jewelry. My main concern is avoiding having to use flames, and only storing minor flammables like rubbing alcohol or soy based stripping solvents. On occasion, this 100 year old building springs a pipe leak and plumbers come rushing in with a master key. Although the swastika adorning my antique wooden statue of Bhudda would likely go un-noticed, I also have a classic "bomb making factory" interior, especially my home-made lamp dimmer making table! Worse, one time, the plumbers did open my kitchen sink cabinet and there *was* a heavy walled ("black pipe") screw-capped "pipe bomb" in there. My background is chemistry. We call any reaction pressure vessel a "bomb." I had, a year or two back, been trying to force fabric dye from the local drug store into a lamp part, made of high tech layered laminate material, to make it black. They didn't notice it, but from that day (and no longer needing my "bomb" since the dye didn't 'take' even after heating in the stove in the extremely oversafe vessel), I've been rather careful about appearances in case a concerned plumber ever tells the police I seem to be up to no good. It doesn't help that I once ordered a tiny circuit board camera for a machine tool so get all manner of "private investigator" catalogs, and lately ordered a leather iPod holder which was originally designed to hold handgun bullet clips, so next to my toilet are about a dozen "guns & ammo" catalogs filled with survivalist and anarchist books and accessories for sale! I also live a few blocks from you, right by Columbia, in a building chock full of students whose two colleges have their own overprotective police, an area thus also quite prone to sudden "fire inspections." That I also have an inflatable commando boat (dinghy) and gas engine in my closet from my old camping days can't help either. But! Having a PhD in molecular synthesis, and a full metal-working shop, *if* I wanted to make something go boom, it would be a very big boom indeed. Gunpowder is for kids, way too friction sensitive, and not even toxic. This guy was a bumbling amateur.

Interestingly... No, it wasn't. Though I was trying to keep the tone a bit light.

Here's the rub: If "racism" is denoted to be a stereotype that assigns likely culpability to an action or outcome based on parental lineage then blaming "white guys" or "arab guys" is de facto racist.

Now you correctly defend this from the standpoint of likely statistical probability. Interestingly if you banged around white nationalist arenas at all (Know thy enemy) you would find that they would likely ascribe the culprit as Jewish based on statistical odds from past news articles.

Who's right? Who's wrong? Doesn't matter really and why I tried to keep it at a light tone. It's just a humourous irony on the admonition of the use of statistics in defending racism or defending one against that charge.

Is it still as much a hate-crime? I don't think so. If a white man lynched a black man we'd call it an obvious hate-crime. What if a black man lynched a black man? It doesn't seem at all the same.

Given the nature of a hate crime as extra punishment based on the concept of providing a disincentive to racist thought and speech for the purpose of stamping out racism... It really does seem to preclude the circumstance as a concept.

Every hate crime law I'm aware of is predicated on the fact that the perpetrator and victim are of differing identity groups. Though, I have no idea of how that works out in New York. Nor am I aware of same identity groups being on both sides of a hate crime charge; thus my curiosity.

Would it be possible for government to forbid filling a small apartment with pipe bombs in the midst of a crowded neighborhood? Just asking.

They're regulated under Title 26 of the USC, same as machine guns and sawed-off shotguns. The bomb maker would have had to register them with the feds.

Which points out that there are two separate issues: simply possessing bombs vs. manufacturing them. Gun manufacturers are subject to a separate set of regulations, but yes, in your fully equipped metal-working shop you could build your own (non-machine) gun with a minimum of government regulation.

travels often, refuses to talk to cops and demands lawyer, Columbia prof who studies drug abuse in Vietnam -- a country that shoots people with that habit.

Why wouldn't he talk to the cops? The Sun article provides a clue: "Police officials have said Mr. Ivanov confessed to the swastika incident after several hours of police questioning." Heck, after several hours of police questioning I might confess to killing Cock Robin with a bow and arrow.

NYC cops are notoriously far off the strait and narrow: today's NYT reveals how drug cops were paying informants with drugs seized from dealers they busted. They were last in the news for killing a bridegroom for trying to escape their menacing presence. As a sidenote, how does Bloomsburg think he can run the country when he can't even keep the NYPD in line?

And why would a Columbia prof study drug use in Viet Nam? My guess is that he got a government grant to do so.

Would it be possible for government to forbid filling a small apartment with pipe bombs in the midst of a crowded neighborhood? Just asking.

Yes. Pipe bombs pose a significant risk of accidental detonation, as does the construction of pipe bombs. Plus, of course, apartment building owners are free to ban hazardous materials, and most do. The second amendment doesn't apply at all in that case.

I see the extreme left-wing deranged no-longer-able-to-think-clearly twisted attack-cats-who-just-got-set-into-a-tub-of-water overly sensitive-to-anything-not-party-approved are in full force today, able to comment on one thing and one thing only and so to repeat that one thing ad nauseam, ad vomentum, ad wrenchyourselfum to ad ignorum.

Rev,Beth called me a "sheep", which I thought was a reference to my use of the phrase "Liberal fascist", Goldberg's book title. Maybe she meant something else. Dunno.

My simple addition after that was to show how chronic leftism was here juxtaposed directly with the most famous fascism. I wasn't trying to summarize the book, but merely to note how neatly the two came together here. As in , what a surprise.

I'm only a few chapters in. I have read most of these facts elsewhere, this having been one of my favorite searches, but he does a good job thus far. Finishing Sowell's new economics book first.

It appears that the good professor did exactly what any citizen should do when placed in an adversarial position with law enforcement- STFU and demand an attorney. It is no indication of guilt or innocence. It is a right, nothing more or less.

The key words in your post, middle class guy, are "adversarial position". No indication in the article he was being interrogated, just interviewed.

There was no Miranda reportedly given to the prof; just a few logical questions for someone out of country at the time. It was his apartment, after all. Now he [constitutionally] says he will self-incriminate if he talks, so he won't.

Like the german guy on the old "Laugh-In" used to say, "Veddy inter-rrestink..."

Possibly the cops got a bit mouthy, of course, and the guy clammed up out of spite. Refusing to co-operate in a possible terrorist plot, though -- along with his peculiar/questionable foreign travel/research are indeed of interest and perked my old warhorse ears right up there.